Songbird 84
by Garmonbozia
Summary: 4/13 'Songbird' is the emergency code for an escapee at Stormcage.  And yes, they named it after River.  But River isn't #84.   Now with an extra added feature, about the Doctor's guilty bills.
1. Chapter 1

The best prisons, to all outside visitors, should have the same serenity as any good spa. It should not be like a spa in any other way. Prisoners should not be able to come and go at will, should not view their cells as voluntary isolations and by no means should anybody related to them in any way put forward any argument that they receive a better quality of catering than any other prisoner. But enough about my marriage.

My point is, the landing bay of Stormcage being in chaos does not comfort me. All official vehicles are docked, but everything else is gone, moved on, sent packing like they tried to send me. That's quite interesting. I tell the Ponds to stay close by and try not to listen to any guards, ignore any stunners, that kind of thing. Then change my mind and tell them not to ignore stunners, but to get out of the way, because I'm not carrying anybody.

Outside, the guards are everywhere. Those stunners are all charged and humming ready. There's lots of noise and running and everything's locked. They're announcing, repeatedly, over a system of hidden speakers that makes the Little Ghost flinch, the emergency code. The reason for all of this chaos.

_Songbird 84_

The Ponds hear the word 'Songbird' and I feel them both look to me. "Don't worry, that's not her number. But yes, they named it after River." They have stopped, by the way, the Ponds. The Little Ghost is still at my side, but the Ponds are practically still at the Tardis door. When I turn, it is clear that they're cowering from the crowd of stunners that were immediately trained on us upon landing. After me _telling_ them to ignore those. Honestly, they just don't listen. The Little Ghost can't _hear_ me and she's a better listener. So now I have to wave them over and wait for them to catch up.

Pond, clattering up on her heeled boots, breathes, "But what does it mean?", soft, as if her voice might set off the stunners by itself.

"'Songbird' is code for an escapee in the prison. Eighty-four is the escapee's prisoner number. But it's not River, so let's not dwell on that."

Because Pond is on my right, Rory tries automatically to step up on my left. This is natural to him, he is accustomed. He stumbles on the Little Ghost's heels, stammers an apology to her, then continues, as normal, with paraphrasing precisely what I just said. "There's an escaped prisoner just _running_ around somewhere?"

"Yes, that's what I meant. Indeed, it is, almost to the word, what I said."

"But you're not worried, because it's not River."

"See above."

"Why is it every time we land somewhere I end up thinking the words, 'We're all going to die'?"

"Ah, Rory, you see, this is why I so often travel with humans. It's their indomitable spirit, their boundless lust for life, their optimism." We have reached the lift down into the complex. There are two guards standing in front of it. This poses something of a problem for me. "Going down, please, fourth circle, just popping in to see the wife."

I could bore you with the details. In short, they try to deny me. I speak, they listen, I am not denied. It is so often the way that one rather tires of describing it.

The quiet of the lift is small and comfortable. Then, between floors, they announce the emergency code again. From farther away and trapped in the metal box, somehow it makes the Ponds more edgy than before. Then, as if he expects it to lift the mood, Rory laughs, softly, mostly to himself. "Last time I was in this lift I was dressed as a Roman." Amy, to my surprise, is also moved to laugh. The Little Ghost, who has been leaning against the front wall, squints through her mask, wondering if she read that right. That's what makes me laugh. Not the ridiculous, non-sequitur comment, no, that's not the reason we're all laughing when the doors open outside cell 46.

"Well, I'm glad you're all enjoying yourselves!" Ah, and her voice is as the call of the golden mountains in the valley, even when it grates like broken glass, for she is my love.

"Hello, River."

She has gotten up from the bed in her cell and come to the bars, where she stands so enraged she almost stamps her foot. Not that she does, but you can see her thinking about it. It's probably just because I was laughing before, but it's getting so I have to suppress it.

Lucky there's that wall of five guards holding the line between us. I can hide behind them until I straighten my face. And their presence very much helps to straighten my face. I peer around between them, and it would seem that they are what has left River so testy too.

"I was _reading_ and they just appeared! They only come when I pack!"

"Well, do you know who prisoner eighty-four is? Prisoner eighty-four is gone, maybe they think you're in on that."

"Yes, because the isolation cells for convicted murderers, they make it so easy to be a social butterfly in here. Is that my parents?"

"Hi River!" Pond hitches herself up on my shoulder so she can stand on her toes and wave.

"Yes," I say, "and the other one's here and all-"

"Hello"

"Yes, but the fact of the matter is, you and I have to have a tiny bit of a chat before anything else, alright? I've ignored some really interesting things, and intrigues, and mischiefs, and things I can help with, coming down here to talk to you, and if you gentlemen could just get out of the way?" I stand up. Pond slips off my shoulder and falls into Rory. You'd expect one of these big strong guard types to try and help her. Not a one of them moves.

"Governor Bracewell said I could. How do you think I got landing codes?"

I didn't get landing codes. The landing was so rough that Pond flew from one side of the console to the other and knocked the Little Ghost for six. I am depending, of course, on the fact that these guards have been here for a while and probably don't know that. And none of them say anything, and one of them shifts from one foot to the other, so I reach down to my side and bring the Little Ghost forward.

"Ghost," I tell her, very clearly. "You are to go and find Governor Bracewell, and inform him that I have arrived. Take one of these gentlemen with you as a witness."

She nods, once, reaches for the nearest guard and takes him by the arm. I see him smile. Just in the corner of his mouth, like a Buckingham Palace guard who just can't resist anymore. Such a sweet little thing in her stupid little mask. He doesn't realize he's going with her until she actually pulls, and he goes. I slip through his gap in the line before it can be closed.

"Doctor?" Pond calls through them, "You're sending her? She can't _talk_ how can she inform anybody of anything?"

"Mmh, you're right. You'd better go with them." The boot heels clatter a step or two before they stop. "Don't worry, you'll be back here, get your quality family time, whatever it is you want. Rory, you best go too. In case Pond loses her voice. Or something."

They mutter and comment and probably insult. Something like that. But they go. I cannot stress enough, I'm not paying very much attention. Not to anything other than River, who has said no more since she greeted her parents, not even when I stepped up to the bars. She waits for the lift doors to close before she tries to kiss me. I say tries, I let her. I just let her know there's not much in it at this particular moment in time. When she steps back again, she says, "Where are you coming from?"

"Funny, there's a lovely unity about the whole thing this time, with the when and the where and the why. I've just come from 1946, where your father was bioprogrammed and a thief tried to steal everything he's ever known about you, me, him and Amy out of his mind."

"Is he alright?" It's the natural question for her to ask. Oh, yes, it's perfectly lovely of her to be so concerned about dear Rory. That's not how she asked the question.

"Who wrote that program, River?"

She shrugs, smiles prettily, "How should I know? You dumped me here before you went running off to the movies. What happened to your eye, by the way?"

Referring, of course, to my slightly faded, and all the more rugged for it, black eye. For a moment, I almost fall into her trap. I'm flattered, and I'm about to tell her, though perhaps with a few stretches and elaborations to cover up the fact that I asked Humphrey Bogart to dance, a fact of which I am less and less proud with each passing moment. _Almost_. Almost, but I don't. I don't, because River said something else.

River said 'movies'. Before we ran off to the _movies._

"I never told you we went to the movies, River." She falters at that. Falls back from the bars and sits down in her hard lonely chair and sighs. "Bet you could kick yourself." To her credit, she admits it, nods over, her expression matter-of-fact. The guards behind me are as good as a wall again, so I lean back against them. It's their own fault for behind there when she has a seat and I don't.

"I suppose we're being honest now."

"You think because you say that I'll believe you?"

"Well, it was worth a try."

"Oh, God, River, I'm not in the mood. Just answer, who wrote the program?"

"I have _no_ idea, sweetie."

"You expect me to believe that you installed a program in your own father's brain without even knowing where it came from? _Amy_ knows better than to do that to a _laptop_."

River grins, and thinks she's got me, and crosses her legs, not that I would be paying any attention to anything other than her answers. Though my mind is advanced enough to be perfectly capable of handling both. It's not that I'm easily distracted, I'm a multitasker, it's the principle of the thing, why am I still talking about this. Anyway, her response, her reason for looking all Cheshire and clever, is "Whoever said I installed it?"

"Nobody. It's called a deduction, dear, it's what clever people do when they have all the facts bar one. Fact, there was a program installed in Rory's head, fact, nobody at the party could have done it because it wouldn't have been complete in time, fact, you're the only factor I can't account for in the days preceding, except for that one little time when you pressed a gun to his head."

"Just a gun."

"Not a gun at all, in fact. You know, even at the time I thought that was a bit over the top. Even for you."

"There's a compliment in there somewhere."

"Keep digging, let me know what I said, I'll correct it."

"I thought you weren't in the mood for banter?"

"_Where did you get it!_" Somewhere, somehow, when I wasn't paying attention, I stood forward off the guards and crossed to the bars and somehow on that last exclamation, which was rather louder than I had noticed I was getting to be, I slammed the flat of my hand against them. And I only notice that because River flinches. Long moments after that, my hand starts to hurt.

More long moments and River closes her eyes, breathes deeply, "When the time comes-"

"Oh yes, I know, I'll understand. Funny, River, how the time never seems to come. Now I don't know what you think you're playing at, but I need to, and soon. I need to understand very soon, and I swear, I _swear _River, should the word 'spoilers' be the next thing to leave your lips, there will be _consequences._"

I want to add that I miss her. That when she does things like this I start to feel very far away, that I don't like it. That I preferred it when she was cleaning up vodka and liquid nitrogen from the floor beneath the console and we were laughing about it, and how we can't laugh now and that annoys me. But I don't know how to phrase it, and she seems too aware of the guards behind me to say anything more at all.

I would like to say, Right at that moment, the lift returned, with the Ponds in it and bad news and the call to intrigues and mischief.

In truth, it's about another forty seconds before that happens. And if you say anything in seconds it sounds like a short time, but it's not. Really. Try it. Count to forty, I can wait.

It's a bloody long time.

Then, "Doctor! The guards took the Little Ghost. They said she was prisoner eighty-four."


	2. Chapter 2

On the one hand, you have River, who says she has no idea whatever who Prisoner 84 might be. On the other hand, you have the Ponds telling me the guards have taken the Little Ghost. Only very recently, the Little Ghost was chained to a table. And River was standing over her, saying things that sounded like comfort. This River, from this time, reaching out to someone who, maybe, she'd never met before.

Or maybe not.

I keep my hands in my pockets. I have to. Might hurt myself again otherwise. "Who is Prisoner Eighty-Four?"

Of course, the last time I asked River that question, she was on the far side of a wall of guards. I couldn't see that she was eyeing _them_, when she said, "I have no idea." This time she says it through her teeth, so the message gets through good and clear. 'Not in front of the boys, dear'. So I hold out my hand at waist height, to indicate 'Little', then lift both hands up with wiggling fingers and pull my best wide-eyed face; 'Ghost'.

River nods.

"Well then," I say, loud for the guards to hear, "It can't possibly be the Little Ghost when we only just brought her here for the first time ever. River, not finished with you, coming back. Don't go anywhere."

"Side-splitting, sweetie."

"Ponds, best visit with her now, I'm off to see Bracewell." I push my way back through the wall of guards and hold the gap open long enough for them to duck under my arm. On my way back to the lift, a thought occurs to me and I push back between those arms again. "River? Try not to damage anybody."

And the Ponds look from me to her. I smile good luck to her with explaining that one and nip off.

As the lift doors close, she's trying to distract them. Some pointless question. I think she's asking Amy, 'What's that on your arm?'

Her hand, maybe? Perhaps a sleeve? Nice try, dear, but if you think I'm going to leave you for a nice easy visit with your parents when I'm still almost entirely in the dark about the things I came here to have illuminated you have got another thing coming.

In the lift back up to the second circle and Bracewell's office, I have far too much time to think how typical this all is, how any time I look for answers _something_ interferes. How any time I track that interference, I find River, which is where the answers are, and that brings me back to the point of the interference, and there's something in this lift with me. There's something here. I can sense it. I shouldn't think with my eyes closed, because that makes it harder to open them and see, but I am not alone in this lift.

When I finally open my eyes, the doors have just opened, and there's a guard outside with a stunner pointed straight at my chest. "Is that pointed at me?"

"It is, sir."

"Is there anybody else you could be pointing it at?"

"Sir?"

So he can't see anybody but me. And there's nobody in front of me but him. I might ask him if he's seen anything strange, but I have a terrible feeling it would be pointless. Instead, I look again at the stunner. "Right, well, which heart are we going for here? Because this lift's going to start back down in a minute and I'd rather be off it by then."

"The Governor's not seeing anybody right now. I don't know if you've noticed, but we've got a situation on our hands."

"Mmh, I know! Imagine your own _guards_ going down for kidnapping!" He stares at me. The stunner drops an inch or two. "You've got my…" And this is awkward, because I've been calling the Little Ghost a prisoner, and that's not really going to help me. Still, it pains me to finish with 'friend'.

The lift door starts to close. I reach out to stop it. The guard sighs, runs a hand through his hair and then holds it out to me. "Wait there." As soon as he lowers the stunner I slip out past him and turn right down the corridor.

"Bracewell! Bracewell, you horrible little man, they won't tell me where your office is. _Bracewell_!"

Down the left hand branch of the corridor, behind me, a door is thrown open, and two tiny little feet patter an ugly little egg of a man out into the hall. Can't get them all right, I suppose.

"_You_ were told not to land," he rages at me, and his jowls tremble to the dangling warts on the ends of them.

"And _you_ were told, well, no, you weren't, but you _would_ have been told not to take my friend if I had known it was happening."

Chewing his tongue, Bracewell draws a long deep breath through his nose and lets it go the same way, like a bull. I try not to shudder. "Come in out of the hall," he says, and clears his doorway.

I'm not mad about Bracewell's office. In all the sterile steel and white of Stormcage, this one room is different, and wrong for it. It's too big, for one, though that's to intimidate any prisoners that might be brought here. If you're used to a cell you can cross in three steps, undoubtedly the sight of a _desk_ that size will have some psychological effect on you. I live in a place of indefinable limit and it affects me. The warm colours, the scent of cigar smoke, the _oldness_ of it all, it's wrong. And it is, at this particular moment, in the same chaos that the rest of the prison is. There are papers on the table, the way there always are.

But there are some, and it's the way he goes about shuffling them that tips me off, that he's trying to hide from me.

"Who's Prisoner Eighty-Four?"

He stops dead. Looks at me. "When are you coming from?"

"No cover-ups. Who's Eighty-Four?"

"The escapee, Doctor, recently recaptured and currently on the way to their incineration."

I am giving him an answer. You don't need to know what kind of answer I'm giving to him, and frankly I wouldn't record it, but you need to know I'm giving him answer so I can tell you that I stop in the middle of it, when I finally hear the word 'incineration'.

Like with fire. And flames. Like things that burn.

"Capital punishment?"

"Well, she tried to escape."

"Yeah, _five minutes ago_, what about appeal, and due process, and extenuating circumstances, and morality, and human compassion? And I happen to know for a fact she won't have answered any questions at all, unless you gave her a pen."

"No, thank you, she's already armed. Very kind of you, by the way, sending us one with _built-in swords_."

"Me?" We're about three millennia into the future from the point at which I met the Little Ghost. And if I haven't already put her in Stormcage, it's not going to happen. My question, the sheer cluelessness of it, has annoyed Bracewell. He throws a sheaf of papers across his desk. The prisoner record. With a picture and everything, and that's disturbing. Worse is the name of the person who the records say brought her here, with the proof-of-charge and all the required documents to lock Prisoner Eighty-Four away for life.

It doesn't even say 'The Doctor'.

It says, 'The General'.

In addition, there is a clause attached to its incarceration, that should it ever attempt to escape, it forfeits all right to further trial. And this General, whoever the madman is, in his cruelty, has signed it off.

"When are you coming from?" Bracewell says to me again. In my head, I hear River's old classic, 'Come the time'. When do I understand telling them to burn the Little Ghost?

On the desk between us, as if to prove my point about interference, the internal telephone buzzes. Bracewell answers, then heaves a sigh and holds it out to me. I take it from him.

"Hello?"

"Doctor-"

"Oh, Pond, _please_, we _can_ go five minutes apart, you know. How do you do it, by the way? How do you always manage to interrupt at the crucial moment? Tell me, is it River? Does she poke you? Does she have a stopwatch counting these things down? How detailed a record of my days and ways does she have there? I don't put it past her, you know, but I'd have hoped you would know better than to go along with any silly scheme of hers-"

"Doctor, look down at your arm."

I do so. Remembering River asking her about something she had on her arm. As I was walking away and leaving them all there. But the skin of my arm is clean and free from any kind of mark.

"Is this something to do with the fact that the Little Ghost has my marker?"

Pond snaps, "Get one." Ever the obedient leader, I snatch one from Bracewell's desk. He's in the background wanting to know what's going on, while I'm asking Pond for her count. She's adding up the scores from her arms, so I write, across the top of Prisoner Eighty-Four's sheet, all that Bracewell needs to know.

'Silence. You're Infested.'

As an afterthought, I don't really want to hand him back something that I've written on. So I tuck those papers away into my jacket.

Amy has fourteen marks on her arms. "And River?" I ask her. "Rory?"  
>"I don't know."<p>

"Well, _count_, Amy, _please_."

"No, I mean…" She fades away, and comes back torn and guilty, "we got split up. Doctor, they're after River."

"Find a lift," I tell her. "I'm on the second circle, Bracewell's office."

"I'm not leaving them d-"

"Amelia Pond, this _instant_."

Protect Pond, times-three. Find out why they-of-the-long-faces are hanging about. Ensure the Little Ghost doesn't come back as a pile of ash. Return to Tardis, escape intact, leaving all things as found. No, better than found, found them in chaos. As To-Do lists go, it's intimidating, but doable. Best get to work.


	3. Chapter 3

The first rule of clearing one's To Do list, no matter how long or ridiculous that list might be, is to identify which pairs of birds might be knocked from their perches with single missiles.

Oh, no, that's horrible, I quite like birds. Not all planets have birds, you know, and the people of Earth are so horrible to them. If they're not melting down the habitats they're calling them rats-with-wings. Pigeons are lovely.

No, to put it more simply, one must first identify if any two items on one's To Do list might be managed at once. This is what leads me to have Bracewell's office guard bring me a portable monitor with access to the prison security cameras, whilst simultaneously demanding that the Little Ghost's incineration be delayed until I can get to speak to her.

I'm really demanding that she not be incinerated at all, but I'll tell them that when I get there.

I hand the monitor to Pond. "What do I do?"

"Find River and Rory."

"Right." She's ready, she's willing, she hasn't a clue how to work it.

"Think of an iPad." And off she goes like a pro, flying out of the blocks, dear, sweet girl. Bracewell, finally, manages to prise his cheesy girth out of his chair to take us to the Little Ghost. With typical selflessness and diligence, Amy is still working, so I guide her up by the arm and keep her from walking into anything on the way out. "This prisoner Eighty-Four," I call up to Bracewell, "had she ever shown any intention of escaping before?"

"Nothing. Altogether very placid prisoner. Used to sit in her cell writing grammar exercises. This morning they went to take her lunch and she knocked out three guards and bolted into the service areas."

"And that didn't strike you as odd?"

Amy cuts in, "Doctor, I've found them."

"Governor, just you have a think about that one." I take the monitor from Pond, give her back her arm and indicate that she should take mine.

On screen, the cameras of the fourth circle follow River and Rory as they run. Not that they're being chased. No, I've never seen a Silent sprinting, come to think of it. Suppose I could have and just not remembered. No, it's just that they're there. Wherever River and Rory might run, there they are. I'm trying to mark them off on my arm. Ultimately I write the word, 'Many' and put the pen away.

I am interrupted by walking into a wall. This is because Amy, rather than looking forward at Governor Bracewell and helping us to follow him, has been watching worriedly over my shoulder. Now, nobody could blame her for not wanting to look at Bracewell, but I've just walked into a wall. I try not to glare when I look at her.

"Sorry."

"Ask Governor Bracewell if he's thought about my question." She looks up, and again, she's all ready to go, only she hasn't a clue where to start. "Think of him as Churchill." There's a bristle from on up the corridor, "Oh, don't get flattered, I mean you're both short and fat."

Again, as soon as I put him into context, Pond is fine to go ahead. So I trust her guidance again and look down at the screen.

I'm rather glad Amy's no longer watching. She might have a bit of trouble walking at the same time as this.

River and Rory are in a corner. There are four Silents in the same frame, and the shadows of more beyond them. My To Do list expands to include interfering in some very fast and effective way that will nonetheless not cause panic in my immediate vicinity. Something is occurring to me, I promise, it's just taking its time. Something to do with the security system and alarms, and maybe calling the guards to their aid, no, not stunners, stunners are electric, don't give them electric, no.

This time, the interruption is entirely welcome, and saves me. Out of apparently nowhere, but probably the ceiling, a new player drops into frame. In prison overalls, though they are torn down the sleeves by a pair of very familiar blue stakes. Luckily, this new third person is turned entirely towards the gathered Silents, not Rory and River.

I know her face too, and her long dark hair, and she was wearing a midnight blue evening dress when she handcuffed me to a chair and said, 'Am Jessica'.

Is Prisoner Eighty-Four, is what she is, it's on her overalls.

She stands with her arms out, sizing up the competition. I don't have sound, but Rory leans forward, maybe asking who she is at the worst possible moment, as is his wont, but River pulls him back. Tight, in fact, close in behind her.

Prisoner Eighty-Four is in discourse with the lead Silent. The Silent, it would seem, says something she does not like. She tosses her head, draws back one arm and dives as though to run it through. She doesn't, but falls amongst the Silents. The four of them on screen fall around her.

She is, in fact, standing on one, which makes me laugh a little bit, and nearly distracts Amy from her distraction with Bracewell. "Nothing, nothing," I say, a little too loudly. I fold the screen up against my chest. "Just… Rory's face, that's all." She thinks about poking out her tongue, you can see it, then decides this isn't the time and goes back to her conversation.

By the time I look back to the screen, everything is much better than it was before. Really, I should look away more often. River and Rory are no longer in the corner. Rory is trying to stop, probably still asking who Prisoner Eighty-Four is, or trying to thank her, if I know him at all. River pulls him away and starts to run.

For some reason, the Silents are not attacking the Prisoner.

Perhaps because she is holding something small between thumb and forefinger. She looks up, directly into the camera, directly into my eyes from two floors away, and tilts this object towards me. A small round disc with a hole in the middle. I've seen it before, or one just like it.

It's all going so well. I like this Prisoner Eighty-Four, she seems a helpful soul, and brave and true.

River, though, I'm not so mad about right now. Because it all just seems to be coming together a little too neatly for her. As Prisoner Eighty-Four climbs back into the ceiling she deus-exed her way down from, I go looking for River on the other cameras. Just to see if she's being appropriately grateful as regards what she just got away with. I'd like her to be happy with this now, so that when I tell her off later, she's already had a chance to enjoy it. I'm nice like that.

But it would seem that River and Rory ran out of one ambush and into another.

Two Silents have River by the arms, and she is telling Rory to run. Really shouting it, so much so that I can read it even over the camera. Ultimately he does. He's no use to her if they get him too.

I'm standing here willing Prisoner Eighty-Four to drop down out of the ceiling again, but she doesn't. And I'm standing here, which means I'm not walking, which means Pond has noticed and is watching too. Standing rapt with her hand over her mouth. I look from her to Bracewell.

"Well? Nobody told _you_ to stop walking. You take me to that Ghost and don't stop again. It's even more enormously important now than it was when it was just about her not burning to death." Bracewell _would_ answer me, but the radio in his pocket starts to crackle. "No, don't bother," I say, when he goes to answer it. "The Prisoner Eighty-Four they thought they had and were taking to burn has bolted at the first sign of fire, and is currently at large."

He answers it anyway.

They only confirm what I'd already told him.

Time-wasters, every last one of them.


	4. Chapter 4

Guards arrive to take Bracewell to the scene of this second and so much lesser escape. I say lesser not only because it has happened from within, and because it is an entirely innocent young woman understandably fleeing fiery death, but because it had to happen. Because it was written.

"You are to stay, Doctor," says Bracewell. I try not to laugh; he thinks if he puts his voice down low and acts all serious I'll do as he tells me. He stabs his finger at the ground between my feet, and it's such a fat little finger it really does lend him great emphasis, "-Right- here." Then, turning away after his guards he adds, "You too, Mrs Williams."

Pond, by my side, balks. "We're not actually _going_ to?" she asks me.

"Why are you getting all upset about Mrs Williams? Where even is she?"

"Doctor…"

A moment late, it dawns on me. "Oh, quite, Williamspond. Pondwilliams. Really, I'm happier with Pond. At any rate, Amelia, yes. We're going to. We're going to be good little children and do exactly what headmaster tells us. We are going to stay – right – here." And, in order to emphasize my absolute understanding of Bracewell's demand and imply our utmost co-operation, I mimic his little pointing movement. My fingers, I am afraid, are rather longer and finer, and lack the weight required for the full effect. Nonetheless, Bracewell would appear to understand my meaning. Or his meaning, reflected, as it were. He eyes us, with those beady little eyes in their little pillows of extra face fat, but he goes.

His footsteps fade down the hall and around the corner.

"We're not staying here, are we, Doctor?"

"Oh, _heavens_ no, Pond." Still watching down the hall, just in case, I point over my left shoulder. "We're going _this_ way."

"To where River is, yeah? We find Rory, get her back, then worry about the Little Ghost."

She nods, so dead-set, so clear on her idea of the situation that for her there can be no other way. "Heavens again, Pond, but no. No, we have to find Prisoner Eighty-Four. Both of them."

And they are relatively easy to find. Every so often, Prisoner Eighty-Four will pop out a service door, or down from the ceiling or up through the floor and trigger every alarm in her immediate vicinity, which shows up on the little monitor still in my hand. Prisoner Eighty-Four will find the Little Ghost no problem, because she remembers where she hid before.

In total, it takes her three minutes, which puts her two minutes ahead of the guards. Ideally, therefore, I should get there in one. But they've shut down the lifts since the Little Ghost made her run for it, and things are taking just that little bit longer.

On screen, the Little Ghost is hiding under the treads of a stairwell. Prisoner Eighty-Four is on the flight above. She moves tentatively, quietly, understanding. And her lips are moving.

I want sound. Trying to retune the monitor for sound while running, even with the sonic, is difficult. With Pond both running and attempting to hang on my shoulder and watch, and all the while demanding to know why we haven't directly gone after her daughter, it's really very difficult indeed.

"_Because_, Pond, if we were to run off after River half-cocked and unprepared, we would join her as captives. The fastest route to success is not necessarily a straight line, oh, no, what a cliché, forget I said that. Which reminds me, is there another phrase for 'killing two birds with one stone'? I don't much like talking about aviacide. 'Aviacide'? 'Avicide'?"

"Doctor, _concentrate._"

Can't, but I don't tell her that. Don't much understand it myself. Something to do with the monitor. Reacting with the sonic, maybe, but it swims when I look at it. Only when I look at it, though, when I catch it from the corner of my eye, it's fine.

It's Prisoner Eighty-Four. I can't see much of the Little Ghost on screen. It's Prisoner Eighty-Four, something in the sleek, watery way she moves. It's making the monitor go funny.

No, it's not.

No, it's just making me think of another camera, another monitor, another video. Prisoner Eighty-Four growing those long stakes from its arms and making its watery way up to the Keeper. And killing the Keeper.

Murder. We were going with murder, weren't we?

_Her_ arms. _Her_ watery way. And maybe, maybe, that moment, I would have had her burned.

"Doctor?" Pond has stopped running, stopped questioning and demanding and keening, and has put her hand on my arm. And looks concerned, so I know I'm not doing my job as a custodian of companions properly. She should never have cause to look concerned about me. Concern is my domain. "What's the matter?"

"Hm? Oh, power cell's going on the sonic, that's all. Taking its time. That's all."

And, like a sick child getting better at the door of the doctor's surgery, the sonic lets me down. Sound happens. I have, clever old me, wired into the intercom system at the bottom of the stairwell. Prisoner Eighty-Four's voice echoes, crackles, but is still clear enough to comprehend.

From midsentence, "- Am being here to talk to Jessica Little Ghost? Am Jessica Apple from latertime." And she pauses on one of her soft little stair steps, "Oh, is Jessica _Little Ghost_, not hears her… Not scared, Little Ghost, Doctor am to be fixing in neartime."

"That's nice of you," Pond says, softly. Something in her tone implies she doesn't really think so. Not that I can blame her; it _is_ rather a case of mixed signals. Get her her ears back, put her in Stormcage. Of course. Simple, logical steps. Though what sort of subterfuge Amy quite has in mind, I can't begin to imagine. Because my mind doesn't work like that. Because I'm nice. Like she said. We're just going to go with the actual words that left her mouth, alright? Good.

Anyhow, Prisoner Eighty Four comes around onto the flight next to the one where the Little Ghost is hiding. Folds her arms over the rail and leans over them, swinging up off her feet.

The Little Ghost is back into her old vicious terror, with the stakes grown long and her back to the wall. Prisoner Eighty-Four, in a mockery of holding up one's empty hands, shows the backs of her forearms; the large, round punctures from which the stakes might grow. The Little Ghost leans instinctively forward.

"Am Jessica," and she indicates herself. "Her is being Little Ghost right now. Not has been seeing Jessicaface ago-times. No, bad, _before_. Means before…" Her eyes are shut. Through her prison jumpsuit, thumb and forefinger take great nasty pinches of flesh.

"Must remember not to allow that," I say to Pond. My voice implies that I would like her to make a note of this. She does not.

The Little Ghost, of course, has no clue whatsoever what Prisoner Eighty-Four is saying. Prisoner Eighty-Four's huge blue eyes become infinitely sad, even on grainy camera, even so far away. She sags, all of her, against the rail.

"Little Ghost am listens to Jessica," she says in the end. Snaps her fingers. Remembering, perhaps, how a fingersnap used to get her attention, that little crack of pressure in the air, the flutter of skin and knuckle. And the Little Ghost looks up. "Tall Peoples are come. Come for Little Ghost and Riversing."

The Little Ghost looks suddenly all about her, scanning the stairwell in all directions.

"No, no, Jessica am making safeplace for her. Little Ghost are safe. Gets Doctor. Doctor knows what to do."

The Little Ghost nods. Quick and earnest. You know, there are moments when it really is rather gratifying to have spared her, thus far. Pond catches me watching her from the corner of my eye. "What?"

"Nothing, nothing."

We are, by now, at the right circle, but on the wrong stairwell. Prisoner Eighty-Four and the Little Ghost are having their private moment on the North service stairs, and we are in the west. Which is a pity, because I would have liked to get there before the guards. Just then, on the monitor, they burst in from the doors on every floor. I put the monitor under my arm and concentrate on running. Still listening, of course. I'm a multitasker.

There's a thunder of boots. Beneath it, the light little clank; Prisoner Eighty-Four jumping over the banister, close to the Little Ghost. "Not be scared. Her will be giving this to him. Not be scared. Soon am be called Jessica and has face and be one of special persons. Not to be being scared of the Doctor."

I wonder if Prisoner Eighty-Four knows that this General person, and do bear in mind I keep meeting people who call me General, signed the order for her to be reduced to a scattering of carbonised dust. No, no, don't be afraid of him, Little Ghost. Nobody in their right mind would fear that madman. I'm doubting myself again. And Amy's seeing it again. I don't know if she heard that last part, but she stops and looks at me before she opens the stairwell door. I pretend she needs me to confirm it's the right one.

"_Yes_, Pond, that one." I run through after her and stop myself against the railing, where below the guards are holding both Prisoner Eighty-Four and the Little Ghost, Jessica and Jessica, the two imperfect speakers, crying, "Stop! Stop-stop-stop-stop-stop. The one in the mask is ours. The other one, the one in the prison overalls, bit of a giveaway, she's yours. Unhand the one in the mask, please."

And they'd better, because she looks about ready to tear them all apart with her own bare hands. Whether or not she's seen it before, she recognizes something of Jessicaface, and wants to protect it.

They let go of the Little Ghost just as she follows Prisoner Eighty-Four's eyes up to me. Prisoner Eighty-Four nods to me, in a sharp way that indicates, 'Job done'. As if she would salute, were they not pinning back her arms. And she does not fight, though the Little Ghost still looks as though she'd like to.

"No," I tell her, while she's looking at me. I make the word solid and round and unmistakable. "No. Come up here to us." One hand, already a fist, tenses again, holding something tight in the palm. The squeeze to remind herself that this might be more important. One last glance at Prisoner Eighty-Four, who tells her to go, and that's enough. I try not to be offended that she follows orders better from herself than from me. As she's coming to us, I turn quietly to Pond and tell her, "Call Rory. I'm sure he's distressed. Have him meet us at the west stairwell, where we came in. Tell him everything's going to be fine, or whatever it is you humans say that you actually find comforting."

"What about her?" she says, nodding down at Prisoner Eighty-Four, but it's half-hearted; she already has her phone out. And I am explaining to her that whatever is coming to Prisoner Eighty-Four is coming and that- But Rory picks up, and I don't finish what I was about to say.


	5. Chapter 5

Rory meets us surreptitiously, out of breath. Now his arms are covered in the little black scores.

"That bad, eh?"

"Worse, Doctor, the marker ran out."

"And River?" Pond's head lashes round to me. Since I already know what happened, she wonders why I'm asking. Not curious enough to say it out loud and ruin it, but she wonders.

"She's… I'm sorry, Amy." He reaches out to hug her, expecting to be the first and only comfort. Really, I think, he wants something to hold onto.

"You did what you could," I say. The look Amy gives me implies that I am being too offhand or flippant or somesuch. I don't know, I'm just having a hard time playing the part. I have a suspicion in my mind that it's not required of me, which just takes all the motivation away.

Rory, as I suspected, just says, "Yeah, I did. What can you do?" Amy, perplexed, pulls back out of his arms, just that uncomfortable half-inch. "Would've got me and all, if it wasn't for the Little Ghost."

"Oh, no, that wasn't her. Or not yet."  
>"Oh, right. Future Ghost. Ghost of Little Ghosts-Yet-To-Come."<p>

"Yeah, something like that."

And now Amy pulls out entirely, and backs three full steps away from us, and the look on her face is one which suggests she is very open to the possibility of 'pod-people'. That's the right term, isn't it? Pod-people? She was rather insistent one night that if she gave me the modus operandi of an earth science-fiction, _fiction,_ mind you, I should be able to identify the species. I am intimately acquainted with the modus operandi of a 'pod-person' and yet no closer to finding any such in the known universe, for the record.

Where was I?

Oh yes, Pond thinks we've both gone mad.

"Rory?" she says, waving a hand in his face, "River? Remember River? Our daughter?"

"Yeah," and he flaps a hand to show how not bothered he is, "she'll be _fine_."

"They can't go anywhere," I explain, and I put the Little Ghost between us, holding her by both shoulders, "Ghost's got their trans-mat recorder, don't you, Ghost?" I'm behind her, so obviously she can't read my lips. I reach down, lift up her fist and open it enough to show the little bronze disc. She's got in rather a death grip, though, and her hand closes again even as I prise my fingers loose. "And before you say anymore, Pond, they won't risk harming her."

"Why not?" she snaps, and tips up her chin in defiance. Why she can't just go along with the overall mood I just do not know.

"No idea," I tell her honestly, "But if they were going to do it they'd have- Rory? Rory, what are you doing?"  
>When I let go of the Little Ghost, Rory took hold of her. I thought perhaps he intended to congratulate her future self, that he had gained some understanding that we time-travellers must enjoy each reward and take each punishment as it comes, ever trusting that justification is around the next corner. That's not what's happening at all, though. He's just holding her, and is hooked over, and staring into her eyes though his own are blank. Miles away.<p>

"_Ro_-ry," I repeat in sing-song.

"See!" Pond all but shrieks, and right next to my ear. "_Now_ you're worried. What's the matter with the two of you?"

"Pond, when was the last time you saw that look on his face? On anybody's face. Think carefully."

She does. After a moment, low and serious, she says, "In the… computer-brain-thing."  
>"Program, Amy, he's been programmed. Something's still in there and something about the Little Ghost has triggered it." The Little Ghost is wriggling her shoulders, trying to slip out from under Rory's hands. Amy is all too willing to help, reaching out to pull her by the waist, but I stop her. "No. We talked before about waking up a sleepwalker."<p>

"Prisoner Eighty-Four," Rory says, with perfect understanding of everything that has happened. He says nothing to indicate that, but I have no doubt of it. "Where is she?"

You do not lie to the Program. You don't confuse it, cross the wires. Not when the wires are the irreplaceable ganglions of a friend's mind. "They've taken her to be burned."

And Rory becomes determined, fierce, becomes the perfect hero of the moment. Starts to walk away from me even when he's asking. "Where?"

Amy shouts out, "Rory! We're going after River."

"Where have they taken her?" he shouts back. Shouts to me, around Amy, missing her out entirely. "Doctor!"

"Rory Williams, come back here and fight for your daughter!" That gets through. Trust Amy to find just the right words. Rory stops. Comes back to her and holds her to him. And I watch Pond relax, thinking she's won, thinking that whatever was wrong with Rory is gone now. He says something small and personal in her ear, then lets her go. He backs away, and whatever he said, Amy is stunned. There's nothing she can say, can't even move.

Rory looks up and asks me again, "Where?"

"Two circles up, follow the smell of fire."

And he goes. Very cautiously, out from the side and edging inward, I approach Pond. She's either about to cry, or begin tearing down the walls with her teeth and nails. I'm not sure how close I want to be to either of those situations. "Pond?"

"Doctor, I need to ask you something and if you're not honest with me, you'll wish you were the one going on the fire up there."

Ah, we're in wall-tearing territory. I stay at the distance I already was, and an extra half-step for safety. "Alright."

"When I called Rory back, just then, I told him to come and fight for his daughter. I said that really clearly, didn't I? There was no way he could have misheard that?"

"The message was rather unequivocal."

"Right. So when he leaned down just then, and said, 'I am'… Please tell me this isn't happening to me again."

"No, would have shown up when I ran the genetics on the Little Ghost. Not related at all, only three-quarters human to begin with, you can come out of shock now. No idea what he's talking about."

She slumps against me, sighing, thanking God, rather than me, and growls, "I'm going to kill him."


	6. Chapter 6

"You and me, though, Doctor," Amy tries, when she realizes she's been blindly following me halfway around the fifth circle, "We're going to rescue River, aren't we?"

"Funny feeling Rory's just gone to do that." Her footsteps stop behind me. "Yes, Amy, I'm being metaphorical."

"Well, don't, I can't take it," she pouts.

"And now you're paranoid. Allow me to settle your nerves. Rory knows nothing of the future. He knows only that there is some reason he must protect the Little Ghost. He understands quite as little as you do the fact that he's run off to her while River is in trouble. You are not related to the Little Ghost in any way. Does that help?"

"My husband's a blind zombie for a complete stranger. Yeah, Doctor, I feel _great_."

"That's because you paraphrase everything in such a negative way. Try, 'My husband is destined for heroism, and the protection of the innocent'. That might be better."

"You've changed your tune."

"Pardon?"  
>"'Innocent'?"<p>

"I was still being metaphorical. No, I wasn't, I was being figurative. Oh, that's right, _positive_."

"Doctor-"

"Which is what I was implying you should try sometime."

"Doctor, behind you."

I had turned, you see, in order to address her properly. Which means I have been walking backward. I back into something now, or rather somebody, who comes up to about my middle back. The Little Ghost. Funny how I could be talking and talking about her and all but forget she was there. Standing, I see as I turn round, with her arms out on either side, barring the corridor. Kind of her, really, with all those Silents up there. And Kovarian.

Even without looking, I know exactly the way Amy hardens, straightens up and the lines of her face all crystallize.

"We thought you were _lost_." She coos this at the Little Ghost. "Time to come home now." Do not ask me why and I won't have to make up an answer, but I put an arm around the Little Ghost. Because it's Kovarian, perhaps, the Little Ghost is undoubtedly very much a young girl. That's happened before and been my fault. And Ghost forgets for a moment about blocking off the corridor and reaches up to hold onto it. And Kovarian, in that cartoon-snake way she has, lifts her eyes up at me and smiles. "Thing am to be having new Owner now?" she says. The Little Ghost doesn't get the mocking, but I do, and it annoys me. But I haven't time to respond, because Kovarian looks down and says to her directly, "You do know it's a trap? He's not your real Owner. He'll betray you. Those nasty Twohearts. Have you forgotten everything we taught you so quickly?"

Using the arm I have wrapped around her, I throw the Little Ghost behind me, back to Amy, and step up to Kovarian. She may be much smaller and less angry than me, but she does not so much as flinch; the nearest Silent on her left is all charged up and ready to destroy me at a moment's notice.

"I want to talk to my wife. That's all I've wanted all day, and things keep _interfering_, and I've had just about as much as I can stomach."

"Well, that'll teach you."

"River," I tell her frankly. "Before you say another word to me."

Kovarian relents, with a small and obsequious and disturbing little bow of her head. "Proof-of-life. Of course."

The crowd of Silents parts. Two human guards in a similar uniform come forward, with River held between them. Smiling, looking none the worse for wear, all coy eyes and "Hello, sweetie." And I think to myself, 'Good girl'.

"How are they treating you?"

"Extremely reluctant to cause any damage."

"Wonderful."

"Because that's your job, isn't it?" All of Pond's strength and toughness is directed at Kovarian. This last from us catches her off guard and she audibly shudders.

"Haven't even started yet. Stay alive, would you? I've thought how to finish that conversation we started earlier."

"I won't hold my breath."

"Well, that's a start."

Kovarian raises a hand and they start to take her away again. Over her shoulder, River cackles. "She never can stand it when we're flirting."

"Mmh," I say, and I turn to Kovarian. "Must _really_ annoy you when you raised her to destroy me, yes?"

Is there nothing in this universe to shake that smile? I swear, whatever it is, wherever it is, tell me and I will go, my God, I will walk through _fire_, but tell me where it is. It is not, however, a short, weighted length, something like a wrench or cricket bat. Not that I've thought about that or given it any kind of consideration, I just know that's not the answer.

But the thing is, how does one know one likes having the moral high ground if one doesn't occasionally have a little dip in the dark and tempting pool of sin in order to, oh, never mind.

"It's not over yet," she says. I'm not thinking of short, weighted lengths of any kind. She sighs, as though finding me tedious. "We want our agent back. With the trans-mat disc she stole from us. Give us that and you can have your wife back. _Gladly_. She can't half talk."

"Oh, you didn't make that mistake twice now, did you? Hold on a second anyway."

I spin on my heel. The corridor behind me is empty. No more Pond, no more Little Ghost.

"Oh, would you look at that! You were so busy negotiating and being distracted by my eloquence and brilliance and serious negotiatory skills that they've up and vanished. What _is_ a Judas to do these days?"

Ah! My dear Madame Kovarian! Whatever happened to that beautiful reptilian rictus of yours? Where has it gone? What a shame that it can no longer join us! What a pity to replace it with such a frustrated, enraged grimace. Why, darling, it makes you look quite as though you are about to explode.

I don't say that, because that Silent on her left is still right about ready to go, but she knows I'm thinking it, and this cheers me beyond all reason or sense.

"Twenty minutes, Doctor. You will deliver our agent to the point of origin, and we will deliver you your wife."

"Or what?" I say. I try my best to make it clear that I don't believe she has anything to offer in reply.

"Or I terminate a failed experiment."

"Nah. You wouldn't. You still have hopes for River, bless your rotten heart…"

"Tempt me." So casual, so off-hand, that little toss of the head, the Return of the Rictus serpentine across that leather-lipped purse of a mouth. "What? No witty riposte? Where is thy endless charm?"

A golf club. A mace. The contact beacon from a Junkari land-crab. They are short, in length, and are weighted at one end. You could get a decent swing on them without losing control or having to keep the range.

"Twenty minutes."


	7. Chapter 7

Add that to my To Do list; locate Little Ghost, betray Little Ghost to Silence. Not really. Well, it depends, doesn't it, on River, and on how they play their hand in that respect. No. No, it's doesn't depend. Me, and my moral high ground, where it is warm and I know who I am.

To clarify, my To Do list now reads, 'Protect Pond (x 3); find out what the Silence want at Stormcage; stop the Little Ghost burning to death; solve everything in one glorious flash of brilliance, escape intact.'

Those of you who are attentive readers might notice that I have somewhat altered the qualifiers on the last point, which was previously much, much more ambitious. It doesn't do to overstretch oneself, might prove detrimental to other more important tasks, like everybody still being alive in twenty minutes or so.

Nineteen now, in fact.

Amy and the Little Ghost couldn't have gotten far while I was talking, but I loop around a few extra corridors, and check the corners and keep a good check for any scores on my skin as I go. Just in case. Only when I'm sure I am neither being followed or ambushed do I take the monitor from my pocket and scan a forty foot radius of camera feeds for them.

They are in one of the stopped lifts, back the way I came. I spin on my heel and would go to them very quickly indeed, if Amy wasn't standing, leaning up in the corner of the frame, trying to read something by the dim red emergency light.

That sound's still on, you see, and she's reading the things she manages to make out. "'Jessica Apple'," she reads slowly, then turns very quickly to the Little Ghost and repeats the name. "That's you, isn't it? That's your name?" Ghost is baffled and says nothing, does nothing. Her body sinks in on itself, pulling up tight and small. Attack her, run at her, throw knives and scream, and she's fine. Just don't ask her what her name is. Pond, seeing there is nothing to be learned there, goes back to the paper she was reading from.

Just out of interest, I pat down my jacket. And yes, that paper is the same paper I took from Bracewell's office. But I had a reason; I had defiled it. You wouldn't give someone back a handkerchief if you'd blown your nose on it. The point I'm making is, what I did was a courtesy, not a theft, which is what Pond has done. That's humans for you; you can be trying to save their life, even their planet sometimes, and all they're thinking about is what they can get out of you. Ridiculous, frankly, plain ungrateful.

At any rate.

I might have run on a bit just now. But it's because I know what's next on that page, what she's going to mutter to herself now.

The charge, for which Jessica Apple will someday be incarcerated. "'Attempted… _genocide_.'" This said slowly, barely believing it, and then the details sharper and quicker, "'of Gallifreyan subspecies 'Time Lord'. Committee recommends the action be treated as complete, though one of the kind survives.'"

If she reads out the next part, I'll – Well, I don't know. I certainly won't cry, but it'll be something like it and just as unpleasant. So I throw their little feed into the corner of the screen and go to the other Jessica, upstairs in the antechamber of the Incinerator room.

Sitting, like a perfect young lady, at an interview table with her hands cuffed and one foot shackled to the floor. No chances taken this time. On the other side of the table, not looking half so calm as the condemned, is Rory.

"No," he's saying, "They can't just burn you-"

"Can," she tells him. "Is prison, her am had tries to escape. Can. _Should_." And a placid little smile, like a Hindu idol.

Rory shakes his head too hard and fast to look fully in control, grabs her hand across the table. "No! You think like that. I don't know how I know, but I know you think like that, because you never knew anything different. But that's not how it is. If you're innocent you have to tell them, you can't just let them believe the Doctor."

Oh, thank you Rory. Your unfailing confidence in my wisdom never ceases to flatter, to gratify, yay, even, to amaze me. Not I understand any more than he does, but I have never for a moment doubted my absolute justification in all aspects of the matter at hand. I haven't. I really haven't, I promise. Scout's honour.

Prisoner Eighty-Four, Jessica Apple, rearranges their hands so that hers are on top, and rubs her thumb over the ridge of his knuckles. "Not being innocent," she says quite simply. Then lowers her eyes. You can see that she's thinking, choosing her imperfect words very, very carefully. "Rory am being at the beginning. Her am being at the end. When _Rory_ am at the end, him is not to have been forgetting her."

For the second time today she looks right at me. Or right at the camera, yes, fine, fair enough, but right at _me_. Echoes, "When them are all getting to the end they am not to have been forgetting her."

She looks up at a guard out of frame and nods. And Rory begins to protest, the way you would if a whole new instinct at the core of your being wanted to protect her. But she looks fine. Ready. Acceptant. "It's okay," she says to Rory, before they take her away. "Rory gets to save her soon."

I don't watch them taking her away. Not because there might be one of those nasty emotional reactions to deal with, but because I've just stopped next to that lift.

And inside, Amy is yelling, "Why are you really here?"

I shout for her to stop and beat at the door. When nothing happens I use the sonic and the doors slide open, just in time for me to hold her back. The Little Ghost is cowering, but there is the threat, just the merest point, of ash stake edging from her forearms. Should Pond attack, she will defend herself. That much is understandable. And the more of these scraps I glean about her, the more I understand why she can be so quick to resort to lethal force.

That's why I get Pond by the arm and pull her away. "_What_ is the matter with you? Honestly! It takes _me_ a full day to go mental if I'm stuck in a four foot metal box."

"She'll betray you, Doctor. All of us." She means it, too. Believes it, even. Without breaking eye contact with me, Amy brings up the papers. I haven't had a chance to read them yet, but she got farther while I was keeping an eye on Rory. What she wants to show me is on the second page. And the third, and the fourth. The full list of charges. "Murder," Amy is saying, flipping across them, pointing out the choice ones, "Grand larceny, spying, _treason_. That's why you changed your mind, that's why you handed her over to this _General_ to be brought here."

Pond, at least, does not believe the General and I to be the same person just yet.

Yes, see? Optimism. You humans could learn a thing or two about it.

Unfortunately, that's about all I have.


	8. Chapter 8

"Doctor?"

"Pond?"  
>"This is a trap, isn't it?"<p>

"Of the very simplest kind. In that the moment we walk in there the doors will be sealed behind us and there will be Silents everywhere, and you and I will have _nothing_ to fall back on."

We are in the corridor that leads to the corridor that has Cell Forty-Six on it. River's cell. Since that's where she was kidnapped from, I can deduce that that is the Silence's 'point of origin'. The Little Ghost showed me before how the trans-matter discs work. The traveller's is placed against its match, at the point of origin, which then returns it to the home point, the one I don't remember visiting.

It also happens to be at a point on an arc, making it highly defensible and really perfect for trapping people. "What larks."

"Another fine mess you've gotten us into, Doctor."

"You've been watching my DVDs, Pond," I smile. It would lift the mood if we didn't walk into our first Silent. Slowly turning, I mark down half a dozen. Amy gets eight.

We're early, you see. Still five minutes to go. Kovarian and her entourage aren't here yet. This one is a sentinel, here to stop us voiding the transport disc or using it to escape with the Little Ghost. As if we'd come down here ahead of time and risk just such an encounter simply to attempt something so sneaky and underhand as that.

"Oh well," Pond sighs. "That was the off-chance, you said that yourself."

"Yes. Anything's worth a shot, really, isn't it?"

"It's not like you lose anything trading her in," she says, and indicates the Little Ghost with a nod.

Which is rather disturbing, in its sweetness and nonchalance, but Pond doesn't mean it. She's just afraid, and afraid for River too. She's not stating a fact, hasn't magically stopped giving a damn about the Little Ghost. She looking for me to tell her she's right. I reach over and take Jessica Apple's prisoner file from her hand. I have difficulty doing it; her very fingernails have bitten the page. "Pond," I tell her sternly, "Until you have met him for yourself, do not trust a word this General person might say, alright? I have reason to believe he may not be of entirely sound mind."

"Trust you, don't I?"  
>"<em>Steady<em>…"

"Sorry, Doctor." When I finally ease the paper all the way out of her grip, her hand suddenly switches to take my wrist, "If anything happens to River because of this-"

"It won't. Nothing will happen to anybody."

"You don't know that."  
>"I do. It's part of my list."<p>

Yes, my To Do list. Doing well on that so far, aren't I? Protect the three Ponds? Well, one's been kidnapped, one no longer knows what to believe and the third may or may not be very slightly traumatised by witnessing the incineration of a very possibly undeserving prisoner. Ensure the Little Ghost doesn't leave in ashes? Well, I suppose she's still standing next to me, but that's all up in the air for now. Don't really know why the Silence are here, haven't had my flash of inspiration yet, have yet to escape.

Oh well.

Not that I'm doubting myself, of course.

I turn to the sentinel Silent and indicate the lift just down the corridor. "Need a private moment with Pond here, just nipping into the box." And I take out the sonic to open the door, but this most obliging of Silents actually stretches out its two-pronged hand and does it for me. Rather nice of it, I'm thinking, and then I realize what it's telling me; the lift is electric. All around the inside of that tiny little box are wires and currents and amps and volts and things that it can use to inflict pain on Amy and I, should there be any subterfuge attempted. "Point taken."

"So?" Pond says, looking put-out and expectant. "What do you want to talk to me about?"

"Oh, no, not Mrs Pond, _Mr_ Pond."

Once more I bring out the monitor. I have Pond search for her husband while I play around again with the sonic settings, trying to make the sound two way. If I can access the speakers in the immediate vicinity of a given camera, Rory and I can have a proper conversation.

"I've found him!"

"Rory!" He hears us. Has _no_ idea where our voices are coming from, and jumps a good six inches into the air, but he hears. "I am the voice of Stormcage," I say. I lower my voice by an octave, because I can't resist and because that's how Stormcage would talk. "You are a trespasser within my walls." Pond sighs my name and digs her elbow into my ribs.

The worry that had come over Rory's face when the prison started talking to him passes. "Look into the camera," I say normally, "I'll feel more like I'm talking to you properly, and vice versa." He takes a moment to find it, then looks me in the eye. "Rory, I haven't a _clue_ what to do. Here and now, that is. Tell me I'm going to think of something. Me or the wife, don't care which, happy to take the credit."

"Yeah, I'm working on it."

"What?" Pond says, very softly. And in her confusion, she looks between me and the Rory on the screen, occasionally stuttering the same word, or parts of it.

"Well, three minutes, Rory, chop-chop."

"You might have to stall them a minute or two."

"Stall them? Oh, you haven't _heard_ Kovarian's with them."

"I… I'm on my way, alright?"

"Well, what are you standing there talking to a camera for?"

He glowers, and looks very much as though he would like to tell me off, then takes my infinitely more sensible point and walks away. I look out of the lift. There are more Silents now. I count ten, Amy gets fourteen. There's a pattern, developing there, but the point is, lots.

"Doctor, I didn't understand a word of the conversation you just had."

"Then you won't be disappointed if it never comes to fruition. Good for you."

"On a scale of one to ten, how useless does that make me?"

"How useless do you feel?"  
>"Totally."<p>

"Categorically untrue."

Two minutes to go and no plan except to trust Rory, and information gained by Rory from a young lady of ambiguous loyalties who only just speaks any kind of English. Amy can't possibly be quite so totally useless as me.

And the Silents, you see, are gathering now. They flock. Seems to be how they get around. Like ants, or bats, just clustered together. They gather in the hallway, around the insides of River's cell. There's a shiny new spot on the floor which I presume to be the trans-mat disc, though I can't see it well enough to be sure. In truth, I'm not looking. Long, thick white fingers are trailing the edge of River's desk, and close, very close, to her diary. I excuse myself from Pond and the Little Ghost and edge amongst those pale, unthinking creatures. Everywhere they stutter like tasers and those narrow gold eyes follow me. And they're all taller than me which I'm not used to and don't like. The fact remains, though, that's River's diary. There's lots of important stuff in it. Also it's River's. So I shoulder in between two of them, take it, and edge back out again. All perfectly civil.

As I step beyond the bars again, Kovarian arrives. With another battalion, which is just overkill now. I get it; it's a show of force, your name is Legion for you are many, _that's fine_.

"Well, it's nice that you're punctual," she says.

No, 'oozes'. Yes, she _oozes_ things when she says them. We're going with oozes.

If Rory doesn't hurry, this isn't going to be any fun at all.


	9. Chapter 9

When Kovarian appeared, the Little Ghost scuttled instinctively behind Pond. Then remembered that Pond got very annoyed at her before and settled for slinking back against the walls. Slowly, quietly, in all the bustle of the arrival, she has grown her blades out long. Kovarian leans down to her level now. She looks as though she'd like to slip forward past me, but I have only a very small portion of this hallway to claim as my own, and I hold the line. She speaks around me instead.

"Hello again, dear. Are you ready to come home now?"

Shaking her head, the Little Ghost backs away. Backs right into a Silent, and on instinct the blade shoots long and nails its foot to the floor. Can't say I'm overly upset about it. I just make a mental note not to stand behind her.

"Has it drawn you any pictures yet, Doctor?" Addressing me, but never once taking her eyes from the Ghost. Since I don't know what she's talking about, and because of the odd, laboured way she says my name, I can only presume this makes sense to the Ghost herself.

"It's a she, actually," I inform her. "And speaking of the cat's mother, Pond here would like to see the kitten."

"'Kitten'," River laughs, as they bring her forward, "That's a new one, my love."

"River, are you alright?" This is Amy, speaking immediately, with total concern and concern more genuine than anything I have ever known. I don't know yet whether I envy her that or not.

"You'll have to pardon Mummy, Madame Kovarian. She never will get used to me being in mortal peril."

"I imagine, Mrs Williams, that it's a full-time job."

River lashes out, one heavy boot catching Kovarian in the back of the knee, almost sending her sprawling. "I didn't say you could address her."

Some of the Silents nearest River start a little hum, gathering the first of a low-level charge. I sigh and shake my head, "Gentlemen, do not harm your hostage. You have far more invested in her than I have in mine." I reach out and bring the Little Ghost round in front of me. She wants to hide, wants to slip around to the side again, but when I hold her there she straightens, loosens her shoulders. I can feel it coming off her in waves; she'll take them all on if they want to give her trouble. She's not going looking, but if they come they'd better be ready for her. I try not to respect her so they'll think I'm ready to hand her over.

"Don't be mistaken, Doctor," Kovarian tells me, "_We _are the only ones here with a hostage. What you have is a bargaining chip. Now, be sensible and let's arrange to swap."

Pond tugs my sleeve, bringing me down close so that she can speak to me privately. I hold up one finger, indicating to Kovarian that I will be but a moment. Pond hisses in my ear, "We are literally surrounded; whatever you do or don't give them, they're just going to kill us and take it. I know you probably know this somewhere in your mad head, but I've had success in the past with just laying it out there for you."

I reply loud enough for Kovarian to hear. "Duly noted, Pond! Kovarian, my beautiful yet lethal companion is too irate to speak aloud, and would have me refer you to the case of the komodo dragon, an earth species which is _not_ known for its rational, non-violent reactions to any threat towards its young." My voice hops at the end. That is because Amy stamped on my foot, with her nasty little boot heels. I can only hope Kovarian doesn't notice.

Pond might have no idea what I'm doing, but River does. "Oh, God, yes! You should see her in action, Madame Kovarian, you really should. It has a terrible beauty."

"The worst of it was when she pounded all those Angels to dust with the sledgehammer that time," I nod.

River tosses her head and hums, "Tigris Five can't be far behind then. You know how the name Amy means 'friend' on Earth? Yeah, not on Tigris Five."

"What does it mean on Tigris Five?"

"It's a mortal insult, actually."

"_Enough_!" Kovarian bellows. Hard to believe such a noise could come out of that little woman, but she manages. Enraged, all red and with her eyes squeezing shut. Which is nice. River's grinning too, and that's nice, sharing a joke like that, while we _wait_, endlessly _wait_, eternally, unendingly _bloody wait_, for her father to show up. "Doctor, the Deus Ex Machina is not coming this time. You will hand over our agent, and the trans-mat disc, or they will be taken by force and your wife will be killed."

And then we're not laughing anymore, because one of the human guards puts a gun to River's head.

It's no fun with a gun. I know that rhymes and sounds a bit stupid, but it's true. Things just get so much less _interesting_ when firearms get involved. And that word, 'killed'. It's blunt and dull and final and, yes, a tiny bit scary.

"I've been going with 'murdered' lately, actually."

"You're stalling," she says. Rather than let myself be thrown, I decide I should probably just run with the accusation.

"Of course. But for purely personal reasons, you understand. Pond here might kill me for putting her though it, but the fact is, I'm just not used to losing. I'd like to delay as long as possible, if I may. Please."

She shakes her puff-cheeked little head and smiles at me out of that one eye, that drawstring little mouth.

Objects which are short in length and weighted at one end. I do not have time to make a list. I will leave it to your imagination. You all strike me as very capable souls.

"On the count of three, Doctor, you will pass our agent over to me. At the same time, your wife will be released, and will be free to make her way to you."

Pond is tugging at my sleeve again. To tell me the same thing. "Yes, yes," I say to her, "I know you're really very angry, about to get all big and turn green and tear your sleeves and all sorts, but let's be peaceable about this, Amy."

"Yes, Mummy, do calm down. Madame Kovarian here is a woman of her word, if nothing else."

"Not much then," I smile. And because Kovarian's not looking, River winks. Amy stops tugging. Must be a mother-daughter thing, River's very good at that.

So I start the count, "One."

Kovarian leans down again to speak to the Little Ghost. "Aw. He's handing you over. Did you know that?" The Little Ghost spins between my hands and looks up into my face.

"Two," I say, and turn it back to face Kovarian.

"Those nasty, lying, heartless Two-hearts, hm?" she grins.

"_Three_."

River takes a long step forward from the arms of her guards. I shove the Little Ghost to her, not Kovarian.

From beyond the Silents, between their feet, a vortex manipulator is skimmed along the floor like a hockey puck. River picks it up with the hand that isn't wrapped around the waist of the struggling Little Ghost.

As the Silents draw back, looking to see where the manipulator came from, I grab Amy by the wrist and pull her behind me through the gap, where Rory is waiting.

Protect Ponds (x 3), check. Prevent Little Ghost getting all black and crispy, check. Well, _ish_. Solve everything in one glorious flash of brilliance, _check_, though the flash is still pending and possibly River's. Nonetheless, check-check-check and out the window with my To Do list! Which is always a nice feeling.

We're running, by the way. There is a scream, quite far behind already, which I take to be Kovarian. Aside from being pretty much always a very good sound to hear, I presume it means that River got the manipulator going and got them out of there.

Of course I still don't know what Kovarian and her tall pale friends really wanted and we have yet to escape, but I'm being an optimist today, on behalf of my glass-half-empty human friends, who _cannot_ get over the fact that the stairs are made of metal and the Silents are channelling electricity.

"They can fire it through the air," I tell them, "We're as dead here as anywhere else."

In chorus far more harmonious than history would have us believe English and Scottish can accomplish, "Not comforting!"

Indiscriminately, over every speaker the sonic will grant me access too, I shout out, "Bracewell! Stop being fat and useless and shut off the power!" Ooh, I hope Kovarian heard that. Her and all her train, I hope they heard that and know it's coming before it happens. Down there chattering at each other when the lights go out and with nothing, absolutely nothing.

That thought, and the first breath of cool, albeit artificial, air when we break onto the landing dock, makes all the chaos and distress feel almost worthwhile.

Over the tannoys and via the guards rushing towards us, Bracewell is just _begging_ us to stay. Well, ordering, but that's just his way; it's what he's used to.

"Can't stop! Tell you what, I'll _call_, see how they're all getting on down there. About a week or so, maybe? Give them a chance to get settled. Yes, I will call you, Govenor, in one month's time, alright?"

Holding the Tardis door open, I count the Ponds that pass me, count two, check in my head that that's right, and close myself very quickly in behind them. While I am setting our course at the console and preparing for takeoff, I breathe in to ask Rory just how it was he found out my future excellent plan. He cuts me off.

"Wait!"

"Yes?"

"Jessica… I mean, the Little Ghost, where is she?"

"River's got her," Amy says, and lays a hand on his arm. He shrugs her off and charges towards me. Leaves her standing there, so I can't help but watch her instead.

"What did you do?" Looking like he might punch me, which has happened before and was not pleasant, and besides, my face is still tender from meeting Humphrey Bogart.

"She's fine, but Rory, think very carefully about what you're doing and then articulate to me why you're doing it."

His face falls. The fight goes out of him, shoulders sinking. He doesn't look at me, isn't talking to me, when he very softly says, "I heard her screaming."

I put a hand on his shoulder, and pass him back to Pond. She has slipped up to his side and is just ready to take that role. "You're in time, Rory. And who knows where else in time you are at this moment. Our punishments and rewards don't always match up with our actions."

He doesn't get it. I'll speak to him again when he's had some time to adjust. For now, I leave him with Pond. I get the Tardis off the ground and into the vortex then leave them alone. I go up, without really thinking about it, to the medical room, and to the spare little bedroom the Tardis built nearby, with nothing in it.

Not nothing. The Little Ghost, as I mentioned before, has yet to give back the marker she borrowed from me.

In the corner over the low, hard bed is a drawing, a triangle on top of a box with a bar on it, the word 'Police' spelt wrong, so large with the time taken over it that 'Box' is crushed over in the side.

Behind the pillow, two hearts. The anatomical detail is stunning, even if the scale is a little off, a little cartoonish. Under them, the words, 'why not kills'. No question mark, but I take that as implied. It could refer to either of us, when I think about it.

Didn't this all start with something about a war? This is what I meant about interference.


	10. Chapter 10

For the first time ever I remember to land the Tardis at the _end_ of the Ponds' garden, rather than within one step of the door. Which is far more convenient, but Amy's trying to grow herbs. Which is ridiculous, if you ask me, considering that one single batch of Scones was all I've ever known her to cook.

Sorry, 'scones'. Lower case.

Even on the way up the path, she has her arm wound through Rory's, part leaning on him, part holding him up. She is the one who finally gets to ask how he got to be the one with the plan this time.

"Jessica," he says. Voice lowering, head bowing at the mention of her. "She told me everything."

"But there was a guard there," I say. Pond would question me how I know that, if Rory wasn't standing between us. She doesn't care that I watched, she cares that I didn't tell her. Later, she'll ask me, and I can tell you now what great pleasure it will give me to point out that the moment was rather lost in her _nearly_ attacking the Little Ghost.

"She put her hand over my wrist. Starting poking like she was typing something. I thought, whatever planet she's from, that must be comforting. Then I remembered where I'd seen it before. And she kept saying it was 'for the birds', which was a really weird phrase when she can't do basic verbs."

"Ah. But we were talking about 'Songbird'," Amy says. Filling in, completing it. Why do they all get so smart afterward? This always happens. And then she leans into him, and she's stroking his arm, and telling him how clever he is. Which is fair, it was very clever of him, but she's trying to get in on it. I am afraid not, Amy, not working on me, thank you very much.

Especially not when it takes her ten minutes to find her keys. She doesn't even have a bag, we're talking jacket and skirt pockets here.

I say ten minutes, that's a guess. After the first three, the door opens from inside.

"What kept you?" River smiles. Amy and Rory both immediately move to hug her. I slide around this mass of heart-warming family stuff to wait my turn in the warmth of the kitchen. The Little Ghost is there, on a stool at the breakfast bar, hugging herself and eating toast.

The family stuff is still going on. To all intents and purposes, we two are alone.

"Hello," I say, for lack of anything else to say.

The Little Ghost raises its hand and waves.

"You got a bit of a scare then, didn't you? Kovarian, the… um.. the lady with the patch," and I put a hand over my eye to show her, "you don't want to go back to her?"

She shakes her head, then tentatively imitates my Kovarian impression. Then crosses her hand on her chest, the same way she does for Twoheart. But this is just one tap, and just with the tips of her first two fingers. It's perfectly clear what she means, of course. The fingertips make a blade. The two taps at the two points she was trained to pierce. Kill. Kovarian would kill her if she went back.

Which isn't strictly true, I don't think. But that's what the Little Ghost believes, and what truly waits for her is worse again. I can't bring myself to explain it to her.

I've lived too long to remember the fear of death. And I can't imagine what kind of hell it must be to live with that fear every moment of one's life.

Luckily for me, the Ponds have released River. She comes to me and hangs on my shoulder. "Once she got over the fact that I have two heartbeats, we got to be friends," she says, looking down at the Ghost. "The whole thing was greatly sped along when she saw I knew how to work the toaster."

"River?"

"Yes, my love?"

"I'm very glad you're alive and safe and so forth-"

"-But we still haven't finished our little talk, have we?"

"Ponds," I say over my shoulder, "Need to borrow your daughter and your living room. Two sugars."

River is following me to the door. And Pond gets sad and restless again, calling her back, wanting to know why I keep taking her away, and not understanding. River goes to her and somehow manages to make, "Coffee. Black," the most comforting thing in the world. Mother-daughter thing again.

When she comes to me, I am determined that she will play no such tricks on me.

I sat myself on the sofa when I came in, hoping she'd take the armchair. Sit opposite, and far from me, so we could have a proper argument needs be. And needs are. But she doesn't, she comes and lays herself long into the sofa by my side, turned to face me. "I can't tell you where that program came from." That's the introduction. That's the catch-up, the reminder of what happened in the last episode, as it were.

I shake my head. "To hell with that. To hell with the details. It's bigger than that, isn't it, River?"

Those big eyes go heavy, hide behind the fringes of lashes that land, briefly, butterfly soft, on her cheeks. Details, you see, details and interference. "So much bigger."

"Don't just tell me I'll come to understand. Make me believe."

She doesn't answer. I cup her face, trying to bring her gaze back to me, but the eyes stay closed, and though she turns her face in to my palm her expression is distant and weary and sad and I can't bear it. "That's what this _is_," she sighs. "This is how I make you believe." River's hand comes up and presses mine. "I know you're afraid to hurt me, but we knew this would happen, my love. I knew all this was coming to me when I agreed."

"No." That's definite. That is not a thing I say, it is a thing that I tell, because no other option exists. No other truth could be true and anything else claiming to be true is a filthy imposter and as far, therefore, from true as false can be. "I wouldn't put us through this." River sighs. And she's close to me, so close I feel that long breath move the hairs on my neck, and I don't mind. I don't mind the whisper of our voices. The only thing that can still sting is the conversation itself, and where it all seems to be headed. "_Please_. If I am to be your favourite game, River, I'd be much obliged to know something of the rules."

River nods. Takes a moment to compose her thoughts and then tells me with clarity and precision all that she can. "The day, my love, is coming, when there will _be_ no fork in the road. No two ways parting, no other option. And I will be there with you, and you will tell me to bring you to that point again and again, forever, to fix it, to loop it all together so inevitably that even you can't dodge it. It's about far more than you and me, and I say yes without a second thought. You'll be angry, you'll be frustrated, between now and then, but come the hour, Doctor, come the time-"

"I'll understand."

Finally, her eyes open. Earnest and pure and with nothing more to say. Not even asking me to trust her. It's nothing to do with trusting River.

That aside, though, I do.

Now more than ever.

I'm not sure I've kissed her since the wedding. I do mean aside from being pounced through cell bars or similar. And anyway, Scone was there, which is always a bit funny. And never spontaneously. I might, y'know, given half a second. But a teapot starts screaming back in the kitchen and we look at each other, both knowing that this means something distracting has happened amongst the Ponds and Ghost. I look at River until she nods me towards the door, that much permission, then stop to help her up.

"Oh, almost forgot," and I shake her diary out of my pocket. "Don't leave things lying around for the villains to find, alright? They're mean and horrible and would use these things against us." River takes it from me with a grudging smile and not a word.

Before we go back through I remember to apologize to her. She tells me not to bother. Not in the tone that I'm forgiven, though, more in the tone that I should probably wait until we really are done with this madness.

Pond is just hurrying the screaming teapot off the hob. Rory is sitting opposite the Little Ghost at the breakfast bar, looking right at her. She hops down from her stool then and runs to me with a piece of paper, with a message.

'"Rory"-designated had says it am not little gost. am something with designated 'jessyka'. Wat being 'jessyka' and am little gost being it?'

The Ponds both wither as I split my glare between the two of them. "Well, so much for doing that the slow and easy way for her. Honestly, you're like _children_. Your own _daughter_ keeps better secrets than you two!"

"Don't start," River sighs.

"Don't worry," I tell her earnestly, then raise my voice again for the benefit of the in-laws, "No, don't worry, River, I'll deal with it. The Doctor will sort everything out, all the trauma and the boring re-education stuff and the confusion of naming systems, yes, he'll explain all that, nobody else bother your backsides taking any care with the small little mad person that occasionally murders things, I'm sure she'll be absolutely fine. Wait til the Doctor gets here, he'll sort her out-"

"Sweetie? Sweetie, we get the picture."

[A/N And so ends another episode, another week. I'm still going to be all insecure and ask if you want me back, as is my wont. Should you want me, I can promise an episode of heartbreaking comedy and hilarious tragedy (or slightly less ambitious versions of the above) entitled 'Ten Stupid And Entirely Untrue Rules About Time Lords', involving a marker pen and a locked room, some more info on Jessica Apple and the overall plans of the Silence. Also, perhaps, a word or two about the Keeper's murder and _why_. So, y'know, if you're interested at all, do a drop a line, what I'm doing right and wrong and all the usual.

As per, _massive_ love to everybody who's still here. To be honest I'm amazed people read at all and I'm grateful for each and every hit.

Hearts,

Sal.

P.S. The charity donation from Roman Noir came to £42! Much love to RandomRuth. It's not, in fact, because Sooty too is a little yellow bear, but it's such a good answer I did it anyway! (Anybody actually cares, hit up Youtube and search 'Arthur Darvill CITV'. He is hardwired into our childhoods) So much love from me _and_ Pudsey Bear!]


	11. The End Of The Month

We stop. I have no idea why we've stopped, but we've stopped somewhere, so I head down to the console room to see what's wrong.

Nothing, apparently. Just that we've stopped. River's standing with her fingers still falling off the handbrake, so I can only presume that's why we've stopped. But I didn't say we could stop. "Why have we stopped?"

"Mummy just wants a few things from home," River purrs, and looks up all sweet and innocent like that's going to change anything. Amy, who apparently wasn't even thinking of excusing herself from company, is halfway to the door. Mr Pond is playing poker for matchsticks with the Little Ghost, and losing. Chaos. Utter chaos. It's a barnyard I'm running, not a Tardis, they're worse than chickens.

"You could have _asked_."

"Would you have said no?" Amy says. And it's such a dangerous question, such a potential minefield, that I don't dare venture beyond a one word answer.

"Well, _no_, but-" Three words. Whatever. Only one was useful.

Amy and River turn to each other, and nod, and gesture out with open hands, saying, 'There you go then' to each other and not a word to me, and Pond puts her hand on the door handle. At that moment, there is a knock at the door. Her hand jumps back as though the brass were red hot. "Doctor, we're in my back garden, who would be knocking at the door?"

Aha, I feel like saying, now that you don't know what to think, my dear Pond, now, it is _now_ that you come running back to me. I don't say that, though. I say, with not a little trepidation, "What date is it? I mean Earth-date, here, where we are, what's the date?"

"It's still 2011, sweetie," River says. And now, _now_, aha, she is concerned about me, now that I stand before her hurt and fearful.

"Be specific."

She checks the monitor, "November 27th."

"_Pond, do not open that door_! River, get us going again, come back tomorrow, or yesterday, or any day that isn't the twenty-seventh of something. Or better, Amy, what was it you wanted? I'm sure there's a place in the universe where they make it better, we'll get you shiny new... _whatever_, just not on the twenty-seventh of any given anything."

I have said enough now. And they have looked upon it and known that they've done wrong and they will respect what I have told them. They're not bad girls, the wife and mother-in-law, they're really not. They don't mean to ruin things and do terrible horrible wrongs and land Tardises on the twenty-seventh. The one thing they absolutely won't do is look at each other, and both break into long, slow, lopsided smiles in perfect unison.

They won't do that.

Pond's hand won't go to that door handle again, oh no. Not after what I told them.

River won't question me, won't slyly grin, "_Why_?" like I didn't just make it perfectly clear that the reason is I do not want to be here on the twenty-seventh.

Rory, hanging his head as the Little Ghost takes matchsticks one by one to her side of the table, won't chirp up out of nowhere, out of the obscure grey fog of his prior uninvolvement, "But it's only the postman."

"How did you know that?" Pond and River say it with interest. I cannot keep my suspicion out of my voice.

"Postman always knocks like that. Doctor, the Ghost is cheating."

"She's not, she has no concept of it, and you only taught her the rules a half-hour ago." That, I say very quickly. I feel I must, so that there will be no misunderstanding, but the thing is, in saying it, I lose time. Time that could be better spent physically restraining Amy Pond away from the door. I am about to begin on that, but the postman knocks again. Calls through with his stupid, useless voice and tongue and lips and teeth, "Hell-oo?"

"Yeah," says Amy. "That's the voice of our postman."

Her hand is on the door. Fingers flexing. She is leaning, ready. We square up in perfect standoff, and her eyes glitter at me like the very devil's. "Don't do it, Amy."

And she pulls. The postman stands there, shifting the weight of his bag on his shoulder. But he has trouble, because his arms are full, overflowing, with letters of all shapes and sizes and in all sorts of envelopes.

"I've got post for... _The Doctor_?"

I sigh. "Yeah, just dump it anywhere..."

"You get _post_?" River asks, bemused.

"Only on the twenty-seventh, but yes and _you_," this addressed to the postman, who is peering in around the Tardis all big-eyed and childlike and about to tell me it's bigger on the inside _as if I don't already know_, "Clear off!"

There's a heap of it now, all over the plaque. Amy kicks some of it away to get the door closed.

"Who do _you_ get post from?" River goes on, and as I charge down to the foot of this stationery mountain (not stationary, mind, all mountains are stationary. Well... on Earth) she falls into step behind me.

"_Everybody_! All the mad, grasping people who think they have some kind of claim. You think Earth debt is bad, you need to start thinking universally, and if you think compensation culture is bad here, you have seen no more than the outside electron shell of the uppermost atom upon the tip of the iceberg and _me_, always _me_, all for _me_!"

"So... So the twenty-seventh," Pond tries slowly, "is your bill day?"

"Which is why I _skip_ it! It's all _completely_ erroneous, you know..."

_I_ am about to suggest that they help me sweep this all into a nice neat pile which can then be pushed into a supernova. Amy, I think, sees the suggestion coming, and darts down to the floor. She has one in her hand and open before can so much as speak. "Invoice for one statue, twenty-feet in height, designed to client specifications, to be placed on Correl. ...Doctor, are those zeroes? Please tell me space money is counted in, like, hundredths of pennies."

River, meanwhile, begins to laugh, low and cruel, and poking me in the ribs. "I never knew you ordered that yourself! You're so vain..."

"River, I haven't even fought that war yet!

"_So_ vain." And seeing the fun in Amy's game, she too crouches down and slits one with her thumbnail. "A fine! For the deletion of a location called the Cursed Place, from the Galatic Ordnance Survey starmap."

"I'm not paying that. Nobody will miss it and no one's ever going there again."

Amy, meanwhile, has gone for a fat white envelope from BT. "This can't be a phonebill, I need two hands to hold it."

"Well, stop reversing the charges then!"

We could argue about that. I've actually been meaning to have that argument with the Ponds for a while, but seeing as I never land on the twenty-seventh of anything, it's never been a problem. I've never been able to go to any of Mozart's birthday parties, but I've never gotten any phonebills. We _could_ argue, but River clears her throat.

"When were _you_ at Kalderash Beach, my love?" Mentally, I beg Rory to say 'Stag Night', and solve everything. That's what Stag Nights are for, isn't it? Wild resorts and brightly coloured alcohol and barely dressed women. I don't remembering being at Kalderash Beach at all, lately, but that wouldn't be unusual for the place. But Rory says nothing, labouring an Ace-Eight that's never going to get him anywhere. So I snatch the letter from her, looking for an alternate explanation. "They're suing you for damages," River tells me. "And a couple of the girls are getting involved in a class-action suit against-"

"Against Scone," I say, and point out to her where it is on the paper. "They've just sent it to me because they don't have an address for him. River, write back to that one, tell them the pastry in question is mouldy, rotted and therefore very much deceased, and I know nothing of his legacy." Then, to myself, "Naughty Scone. Never thought he had it in him..."

River and Pond are starting to exchange glances again. I understand the bills I get must look odd to an outsider, but it's all really very simple. The Hindu religion would call it karma.

Pond gets distracted form worrying about me by something more worrying altogether. From out of the heap, she snatches a grubby manila envelope. "Hold on... Rory, this is your writing." What she says comes only moments after a low groan and a clatter of matchsticks, so he's free to come and see.

"I never wrote a letter. The Doctor's _standing_ here, if I had something to tell him I'd just tell h- Oh, that is my writing."

It's the bill for the hotel room I wrote into his mind. Also for the damage to the Favourite Car that was borrowed-not-returned during that particular caper. These are things of which Rory himself has no recollection, the program that they were originally part of having been almost entirely collapsed. Amy understands, though. She was there. "But... but that was, like, a dream, it wasn't real."

They've missed the point entirely, Amy and River. Rory isn't even looking in the right direction.

Howard Hawks has sent me one, claiming back the cost of an Italian glass coffee table, which I'm not paying for because I got punched through it and if he wants to charge anyone he can bloody well charge Bogart. There's one in Amy's handwriting, complaining about the destruction of her last three attempts to grow a herb garden. There's a three page itemized docket from Governor Bracewell for damages incurred, chaos caused, riots stirred and the cost of suppressing them, and the upkeep of the three-dozen or so Silents he is now carrying.

There is one in a deep blue envelope that I make a point of at least checking.

"I was hurt," it says. "I know you fixed me, but I don't think you're sorry. Lots of love, Sexy."

Amy has an envelope in her hand, about to open it. I snatch it away, too fast and rude about it, but I know what it is. And I don't want her to see. It's the logo I recognize. Almost the logo of a very famous company, altered a little. 'Friend-U-Store', they're called, or would be called, if they were real. That's a cumulative bill. That's run up a while.

You can't live as long as I have and not run up a few debts. Not in monetary terms, of course. I wish. That would be easier. When it's money, you can pay it off. Even if you can't, you just go bankrupt, it's not the end of the world. No, the twenty-seventh brings round much worse bills. You never run out of guilt, you see. That's how you know you're turning into a monster.

I have a wheelbarrow, somewhere. The sooner I can get these into a fire, the better.


	12. 10 Stupid Rules About Time Lords Preview

River is in the pool. I am not, due to the fact that she laughed at my stripy trunks, with which there is absolutely nothing wrong and green and gold is a time-honoured colour combination denoting gentility and grace. And not in the good way that makes me laugh back, in the way that made me go and get a dressing gown and sit, instead, by the pool edge. She treads water, just so far out of reach.

"Do you want the good news or the bad news first?" I ask her.

"Oh, the good. Then we can have a sandwich."

"Right … Sorry, what?"

"You'll see."

In my confusion, I have lost the thread entirely, but she prompts me. "Good news, you're not going back to prison for a while."

"Wonderful! Bad news?"

"Stormcage is full of angry Silents, stranded out of their time and besieged, and they're rather taking it out on all and sundry."

"And Bracewell?"

"Didn't ask. At a guess, locked in his office wearing a rubber hazard suit, surrounded by armed guards." This time it's the good laugh. "So what's this about a sandwich? Because you can get out and get it, I'm not fetching and carrying for you."

"I don't need to." She has, in the course of our conversation, drifted a little closer. I, however, had thought nothing of it. Now her hand brushes my foot, tugging just the ends of my toes underwater, and I'm thinking of it. "See, it's not a sandwich you eat, it's a sandwich that makes you feel better about bad things. So you have a good thing first, to lift your mood, then you have the bad thing, then you have a good thing to cheer you up."

"Oh. Psychology. Very sensible. So what's your second good thing then?"

She does not answer me because I don't get to finish my question. I don't get to finish my question because that soft, teasing hand suddenly clamps vicelike around my ankle and drags me tumbling, dressing gown and all, in after her. Which is not funny, because I could have banged by head or anything, and really rather childish of her. I tell her so and she splashes water in my face.

"What is the matter with you?"

"I'm here," she says simply, pouting as I haul myself out. "And you're here. And I'm not in prison." River stretches out a hand. Putatively, so that I can haul her up. It is only warily that I take it. She tugs again, but it's only playful, and ultimately she sits up on the side next to me.

And it would all be rather wonderful. Except. Of course, 'except'. What ever happens around here that doesn't have an 'except'? I shouldn't look into her eyes. We should never smile, or laugh together. Because the _instant_ we do, there is bound to be an 'except'.

This time, the except is running footsteps in the hallway, and Pond's voice calling out for me.

"In here!"

Her footsteps rumble up to the doorway, then squeak as she turns on her heel. She stands theatrically with her back to us and her hands over her eyes. "I saw nothing. I don't want to know."

"Calm _down_, Pond, I fell in." River sniggers next to me and I elbow her in the ribs. She hisses and while Pond is turning around, even while I'm talking again, she is teasing, telling me how I'm all edges and corners. "What is it, what's the matter?"

"It's Rory. He was playing poker with the Little Ghost except something went wrong and now they're arguing."

See? Excepts. I _was_ sitting happily with River by the pool on our own, _except_ now I have to go and do conflict resolution upstairs.

This time, River pulls me up. I lean warily against the possibility of being shoved back into the pool.

Mmh; grammar. Sentence structure. These are things that may soon need to be broached with Am-Being-Designated-Jessica-Now. I know 'except' might be rather advanced in terms of Introductory English, but it's something she's clearly going to need. Context is everything.

For instance, if you didn't have any context at all on the situation, you might not think it was strange to see a barely-familiar young woman sitting at the folding card table with Rory. With context, however, with the contextual knowledge that this young woman generally wears a mask, and generally would not remove it for diamonds and gold and light from the hearts of dying stars, it becomes very strange indeed.

Without that same contextual knowledge, one might be alarmed, should that young woman literally fall over backwards when she sees you, with one hand shielding the nearside of her face and the other dragging her hair down over it, so she can't even watch to see Rory tell her, "No, Jessica. Nothing's going to happen." And then that girl clawing blindly around the table, upsetting the cards and the matchsticks, until the mask is slipped under her hand. "You said you would _try_," Rory admonishes, as soon as she looks up. Jessica nods first, accepting what she said before, then shakes side to side, because whatever she said she'd try, she can't do it. "I'm telling you, nobody here will _hurt_ you, why won't you-"

"Rory," I say, and he shuts up. "Leave her alone."

River, then, from out of nowhere, tells us both to follow her, like she owns the place. Then tells Amy to bring the Little Ghost. Or Jessica. Sorry. I'm still getting used to not calling her 'it'. This is for the best, since River and I both have double-heartbeats and Rory's in a frustrated rage with her. Amy is the only one here that can calm her properly down.

River leads us all in merry procession to a room I've never noticed before and which very possibly was not there. It is a small, plain room, but comfortably furnished, deep couches and low lighting. Amy wrinkles up her little nose, not liking the colour scheme, thinking it very dark. I know this though she hasn't opened her mouth; I've seen enough of her house to know. All very chic, very modern. All shades of cream and taupe and mushroom and stone with 'accent' colours.

Rory and I, like she would appear to think good men should, blindly follow River inside. Jessica lingers by the door, slightly behind Amy. Again, she doesn't have to say a word for me to know that she's eyeing the room and not liking what she sees. Interior decorating, though, means nothing to her. No, she's looking to see where the other exits are, and there are none. Still, with much coaxing, and much help from Rory, River manages to bring her inside.

Guiding her gently, one hand around the skinny wrist.

Then twisting that wrist up behind her back and grabbing the other arm round to meet it, bending them out so Jessica can't grow stakes without stabbing herself. "Rory, the mask!"

Jessica fights, and in a desperate, fish-on-a-line kind of way that makes me uneasy. But I have seen the face behind the mask, and in the future she would appear to have done away with it entirely. I am standing back, wondering if this is the day that that happens, when River nods me in.

So I stand a step behind Rory.

And when he finally manages to get a hold of that white face, he pulls it off to one side.

The Little Ghost, Jessica, she sees me. Her big blue eyes go even bigger, then sink in. She faints dead away in River's arms and hangs there limp as silk.

"What is going on with you all today?" I ask, heaving the little body forward. Little, yes, and skinny, yes, but not light. No, heavier than she has any right to be, but now is not the time to complain. "Honestly, you're behaving like children. What was the point of that? Did that have to be today?"

I am saying this, and I am laying Jessica out on one of the couches and I hear a hatch open in the wall behind me. A little sliding door, about a foot by a foot. I turn, and beyond that little hatch is River, grinning. Which doesn't surprise me. She and Rory are no longer in the room.

"That door," I say, and point without looking, "It's locked now, isn't it?"

"Yep."

"And the object of this is what? Because you've been in prison I have to try it out?"

"No." Through the hatch, she pushes a notebook and a marker. "Those are for Jessica. We have her mask. You and her need to have words."

"Sorry, Doctor," Rory chips in, over her shoulder. He's not sorry though. He was in on this. They were all in on this.

There was no 'Except', it was all _planned_.

It's not fair. When Jessica wakes up, she'll agree with me. They got her too, tricked and duped and hoodwinked the both of us. So that's something to talk about, I suppose.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the relatively mundane story behind the rather more fantastic scene of me, sitting, dripping wet, no shoes, no sonic and not even my tie, in a small cosy lounge with a comatose ghost, locked in and denied all the comforts of the outside world by my own wife.

I don't get surprised anymore, you know.

A clown could fall down from the ceiling with a chainsaw and some sparklers and I'd just say hello.

In a moment I will try and wake up Jessica so I can get this over with. Right now, I go to the hatch, and knock. River answers.

"That was quick. Are you sure you've had a proper heart-to-hearts?"

So that I will say nothing I might regret, I say no more than what I have to. So that I will say no more than I have to, I keep my teeth closed against the tide that would rush forth. "Might I at least have a towel, please, darling?"


End file.
